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STUDENTS WIN SERVICE INTERNSHIP AWARDS

Reed students Jody Boyer ’00, Carey Doyle ’00, Jeff Flory ’00, Kate Miller ’01, Armand Perry ’02, and Monica Serrano ’02 recently received McGill Lawrence Internship Awards from Reed College. Funded by a bequest from Marian McGill Lawrence, a longtime friend of Reed College, and using matching student senate funds, the scholarship provides funding for students in low-paying or volunteer internships, preferably ones that place recipients in contact with diverse populations. The internship experience is intended to "establish a dialogue between a Reed education and the community, the outside world," said Elizabeth Bruch '99, a student who worked to establish the internship fund.

Jody Boyer, of Portland, Oregon, will work with Growing Gardens, a local nonprofit organization. Growing Gardens works with low-income families and senior and disabled people to improve nutrition, build self-reliance, and reduce food costs. Boyer will develop a gardening manual for their clientele to help merge education and art through community action. In conjunction with this internship, Boyer will produce a small edition artist book, which will be donated to the Reed College book collection, Growing Gardens, and local and national museums.

Carey Doyle, of Gualala, California, will be working for the Worker's Organizing Committee on their campaign to create a hiring site for migrant day laborers in inner southeast Portland. In cooperation with professors from other universities, she will assist the organization in completing a survey of the day laborers and then use this data to lobby the city about donating space for this site. She will also set up a lending library for the day laborers, coordinate computer and holistic health classes, and support the daily operations of the Worker's Center.

Jeff Flory, of St. Paul, Minnesota, will be working at IRCO, the International Refugee Center of Oregon, a nonprofit organization that provides employment, youth and family support, and educational services for Portland's refugee and immigrant communities. Their mission is to aid refugees fleeing political persecution and to assist immigrants in becoming contributing members of society, while affirming the preservation of their own cultures. As an intern, Flory will help in the economic and cultural transition of political refugees to U.S. society through teaching English and U.S. cultural practices related to employment.

Kate Miller is traveling to the Hunza Valley of Northern Pakistan to work with the Aga Khan Rural Support Program, researching the effects of development in the region over the past 15 years. Since the construction of the Karakorum Highway in the mid-1980s, Hunza has been increasingly connected to the world through the efforts of the Pakistani government, private business, notably the tourist industry, and foreign NGOs. Miller will be studying the effects of these changes on local people's experience of mobility.

Armand Perry, of Phoenix, Arizona, has received a teaching internship with the Summerbridge program, a division of AmeriCorps, in New Orleans. This program brings middle-school students, particularly those from diverse and underprivileged public schools, onto a prep school campus for core academic and organizational skill classes with the goal of the holistic development of its students. There is a 5:1 student to teacher ratio and a "branch" administrative structure that allows each teaching intern to participate in advising, curriculum, or enrichment activities.

Monica Serrano, of Aloha, Oregon, will intern with the Fundacion de Antropologia Forense de Guatemala and the Equipo de Estudios Comunitarios y Accion Psiosocial, two Guatemalan organizations that deal with the human rights processes that have been underway since the 1996 peace accords. She will assist in exhuming the remains of victims of the massacres that took place throughout the civil war. The information will be used not only to identify and prosecute political criminals, but also to identify the problems and needs that the affected communities face. She will also work with the team in charge of providing psychosocial reparation to these communities.